night of 26 only, or vice verfa: but, what is most fingular in the Indian horometry, their g,hurees are unequally distributed among the day and night watches; the former varying from 6 to 9 in the latter, which are thus prevented from any definitive coincidence with our time, except about the equinoxial periods only, when one puhur nearly correfponds to 3 English hours. I fay nearly, becaufe even then the four middle watches have only 7 g,hurees, or 2 hours, 48 minutes, of ours; while the extremes have 8 g,hurees a-piece, or 24 English minutes more than the others, and confequently agree with our 3 hours 12 minutes; while at other times the puhur is equal to no less than 3 hours 36 minutes; a fact which I believe has never yet been ftated properly; though many writers have already given their fentiments to the public on the fubject before us: but they were probably mifled by faying 4-38 are 12 hours for the day, and the fame for the night. Without confidering the fexagefimal divifion, we must first make of the whole 24 hours, or 8 watches, 4 of which, during both equinoxes, having 7 g,hurees only, give 28 and the other 4 extreme watches, confifting at thefe periods alfo of 8 g,hurees cach, form 32-60 in all; not 64 g,hurees,* as fome calculators have made it, who were not aware that the g,huree, or dund, never can be more nor lefs than 24 of our minutes, as I have proved above, * One of those vulgar errors originating in the crude and superficial notions which none take the trouble to examine or correct, and being thus implicitly adopted, are not soon nor easily eradicated: nay, this very idea of sixty-four may be supported from an old distich. At,h puhur choun sut g,huree, k,hurre pokaroon pee, But I answer, the bard seems a sorry astronomer, or he would not have followed the erroneous opinion of there being 8 g,hurees in each of the eight puhur, and 64 in the natural day: though this prevails among the illiterate Indians uncontroverted to the present hour; and, were I not to expose it here, might continue a stum bling-block for ever; and in this random way have we also imbibed the doctrine that 4 puhur, of three hours each, are twelve of course; and eight of these must give our 24. A brief, but truly incorrect, mode of settling this account. by confidering that 24 multiplied by 60, or 60 by 24, must be alike, which I fhall make still more evident hereafter. In judicial and military proceedings, the prefent enquiry may, fometimes, affume confiderable importance; and, as an acquaintance with it may alfo facilitate other matters, I have endeavoured to exhibit the Indian horometrical fyftem contrafted with our own, upon a dial or horal diagram, calculated for one natural day of 24 hours, and adjusted to both the equinoctial and folftitial feafons, comprising four months of the twelve, that thefe may ferve as fome bafis or data for a general coincidence of the whole, at any intermediate period, until men who are better qualified than the writer of this paper to execute fuch a task with precifion, condefcend to undertake it for us. He is even fanguine enough to hope that fome able artists in Europe may yet be induced to conftru&t the dials of clocks, &c. for the Indian market, on the principles delineated here, and in Perfian figures alfo. But we must now proceed to an explanation of the horal diagram adapted to the meridian of Patna, the central part of the Benares Zemindary, and the middle latitudes of Hinduftan. The two exterior rings of this circle contain the comple 24 English hours, noted by the Roman letters, I, II, III, IV, &c. and in the minutes are marked in figures, 24, 48, 12, 36, 60, agreeably to the fexagefimal fcale, where on the equi-diftant interfections of this dial are founded; the meridional femicircles of which represent our femidian watch-plates, and for obvious reasons, with the modern horary repetition. See the note in page 82. I have diftinguished the eight (4 diur, nal and 4 nocturnal) watches or puhurs, from I. to IV. by Roman letters also, with the chime (gujur) or number of bells ftruck at each in large figures, below the puhur letter, to which they belong, and in the fame reiterated way; but thefe, inftead of ranging from the meridian, like the English hours, commence with the equatorial and tropical lines alternately, as their fituations and spaces muft regularly accord with the rifing and fetting of the fun at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, as alfo at the fummer and winter folftices. The days then differ in length alternately from 34 to 26 g,hurees, as noted by the chime figures of every watch; all of which will be more evident from the mode of inferting them, and the manner that the plate has been fhaded, to illuftrate these circumstances fully. II. puhur, however, never varies; and being upon the meridional line, it of course conftantly falls in with our XII. day and night. The fourth ring from the circumference fhews the g,hurees, when the day is longeft, running with the fun to the top, and from this to VI. P. M. for the fubdivifions of the day, and in the fame manner by the bottom onwards for thofe of the night, throughout these concatenated circular figures 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9, 1. 2, &c. q. v. in the plate. Still more interior ap pear the equinoctial g,hurees, and on the fame principles exactly. Within these come the winter folftitial ghurees, fo clearly marked as to require no further elucidation here; except that in the three feries of convergent figures now enumerated, the reader will recollect, when he comes to the highest number of g,hurees in any puhur, to trace the latter, and its chime, ar number of bells, out by the g,huree chord. For inftance, when the days are shorteft, begin 48 minutes after VI. A. M. and follow the coincident line inward to the centre, till you reach 9 and 34 for the clafing ghuree and gujur of the night; thence go round in fucceffion upwards with the day g,hurees 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. the chord of which laft terminates 36 minutes after IX. and has 7 upon it for 7 bells, and 1 for ek puhur din, the first watch of the day. In this way the whole may be compared with our time; allowing not only for the different meridians in this country, but for the several intermediate periods, and the difficulty of precifely afcertaining the real rifing of the fun, &c. Nearest the centre I have inferted the prime divifions or puls of every g,huree, viz. 60, fo-15, 30, 45, 60, in two spaces only, because these are the invariable conftituent minute parts of the g,huree at all feafons of the year, and confequently apply, (though omitted to prevent confufion,) as in the plate, to every one of the horal fections delineated there, into which the whole dial is equally divided. The intelligent reader may now confult the diagram itfelf, and, I truft, with much fatisfaction, as it, in fact, was the first thing that gave me any accurate knowledge of the arrangement and coincidence of the Hindustanee with the English hours, or of the rules on which their economy is founded. I certainly might have traced out and inferted the whole for a complete year, had not the apprehenfion of making the figure too intricate and crouded for general utility, determined me to confine it to the elucidation of four months only; efpecially as the real and artificial variations can be learned from an Indian aftronomer, by those who may wish to be minutely accurate on this fubje&t; whence every one will have it in his own power to note the exact horal coincidences at any given period, by extending the prefent fcheme only a little farther; because the natives never add nor fubtract a g,huree until the 60 puls of which it confifts are accumulated, but, with their ufual apathy, continue to diftribute and reduce the conftant increafing and decreafing temporal fractions among or from the fe veral puhurs, with little or no precifion. Nay, they often have recourfe to the laft of the diurnal or nocturnal fubdivifions for this purpose, when the grand herologist himself is about to inform them, that now is the time to wait for the whole of their loft minutes, before they proceed on a new score, at the rifk, perhaps, of making the clofing g,huree of the day or night as long as any two of the reft. On the other hand, when they have previously gallopped too faft with time, the fame ill-fated hindmoft g,huree may be reduced to a mere fhadow, that the G,huree,alee may found the exact number, without regarding its difproportion to the reft in the fame puhur at all. So much this and fimilar freedoms have been and can be taken with time in Hindustan, that we may frequently hear the following story: While the faft of Rumuzan lafts, it is not lawful for the Muffulmans to eat or drink in the day; though at night they not only do both, but can uninterruptedly enjoy its other pleafures alfo ; and upon fuch an occafion, a certain Omra fent to enquire of his G,huree,alee, if it was ftill night; to which the complaifant bellman replied in the true ftyle of oriental adulation, Rat to ho chookee mugut peer moorfhid ke wafte do g,huree, myn luga rukee. "Night is past to "be fure; but I have yet two hours in referve for hist "worship's conveniency." The apparatus with which. the hours are measured and announced, confifts of a fhallow bell-metal pan, named, from its office, g,huree-al, and fufpended fo as to be eafily ftruck with a wooden mallet by the G,huree,alee, who thus ftrikes the g,hurees as they pass, and which he learns from an empty thin brafs cup (kutoree) perforated at bottom, and placed on the furface of water in a large veffel, where nothing can disturb it, while the water gradually fills the cup, and finks it in the space of one ghuree, to which this hour-cup, or kutoree, has previously been adjufted aftronomically by an aftrolabe, used for fuch purposes in India. Thefe kutorees are now and then found, with their requifite divifions and fubdivifions, very fcientifically marked in Sanferit characters, and may have their uses for the more difficult and abftrufe operations of the mathematician or aftrologer but for the ordinary occurrences of life, I believe, the fimple rude horology defcribed above fuffices (perhaps divided into fourths of g,huree) the Afiatics in general, who, by the bye, are often wonderfully uninformed respecting every thing of this kind. The whole, indeed, appears, even to the better forts of people, fo perplexing and inconvenient, that they are very ready to adopt our divifions of time, when their refidence among or near us puts this in their power: F 4 whence |